Not Your Average Whoopsie-Doodle!

I work at a mid-tier extended-stay hotel. Most of our extended-stay guests are government workers, and with them being here for months at a time, you develop a good relationship with them — if you’re lucky!

One of these guests is super nice. She’s always outside smoking whenever I pop out on a smoke break. We tell each other our life stories and talk about our cats. She sometimes comes up to the front and chats, too. It makes the nights go by smoothly.

One night, she comes up to the desk while my assistant general manager and I are working the 3:00 to 11:00 shift. She looks… embarrassed? Shocked? It’s not an expression I’ve seen on her face before. She’s former military, and she looks and sounds like the type of lady who has chain-smoked Marlboros for forty years.

Guest: “Can you come down to my room? I had an accident in there.”

I trot down the hall with her because we have good relationship. I’m figuring it’s something minor — she knocked over a lamp or broke a dish or something. No big deal; it’s a quiet night and I’m bored. She opens the door and, dear readers, the first words out of my mouth are:

Me: “Holy s***.”

There is a g**d*** gunshot through her window.

She was cleaning her gun, checked the chamber, took out the clip, and still had the bright idea to point it at the window and PULL THE TRIGGER. On the FIRST FLOOR. She’s government and former military, and she still did that! I don’t know what that hotel uses for soundproofing, but she is on the first floor and we didn’t hear it at the front desk. That baffles me to this day.

Realizing this is above my paygrade, I go back and tell my assistant general manager to take a look at the room. He comes back shaking his head, muttering something about, “I hate my job.”

Unsurprisingly, she does not remain a guest for very long. Her department “reassigns” her and pays for the window, and we never see her again.

Of course, we have guests ask about what happened to the window. My general manager has instructed all of us to say, “A lawnmower sent a rock through the window.”

I told that to one guest, and he looked suspicious.

Guest #2: “It looks like a bullet went through it.”

Me: *Laughs* “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?”